A multitude of customized services are presently available for serving telephone customer needs. Illustrative of such a service is a call forwarding feature which enables a customer to control the forwarding of her incoming calls to a designated telephone station instead of her regular telephone station. Typically, the service is activated by the customer dialing a prearranged code plus the directory number of the telephone station designated to receive the forwarded calls. In many situations, the call forwarding service is activated before the customer leaves the home or business environment of her regular telephone station. The service is usually deactivated when the customer returns to the environment of the regular telephone station. Again, the deactivation is generally controlled by the customer dialing another prearranged code.
While such a service has enjoyed widespread commercial success, a common problem facing the art is that a customer often does not remember to deactivate the service when she returns to her home or business environment. Obviously, such a situation results, for example, in the undesired forwarding of calls, wasted time, customer frustration and many times, unnecessary other calls to receive information about who called and finally to return the missed calls.
One known advanced communication arrangement, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385 issued to L. L. White on June 23, 1981, is based on an infrared personnel locator system using a periodic unique infrared identification code emitted from a battery-powered transmitter unit to identify the person carrying the transmitter unit to an overhead infrared receiver as the person enters the receiver's monitoring zone. The transmitter unit identification code together with the receiver identification code is communicated to a common control unit which displays the location of all of the transmitter units. For paging, the system provides alerting units, e.g., telephone station sets, which are selectively operated in the zone closest to the person being paged. As disclosed in the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385, the common control unit may be implemented as part of the control unit of a telephone switching network and call forwarding to the nearest telephone station set may be effected based on a person's location. Although the advanced services afforded by this known arrangement are very useful, the cost and complexity associated with providing an additional wiring arrangement, separate from the telephone wiring, to connect the infrared receivers to the common control unit, and monitoring the location of particular individuals based on unique identification codes, are undesirable and unnecessary in many applications.